


Asymmetric

by heilan_coos



Series: The World of Humans [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Entomophobia, Fluff, M/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24673717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heilan_coos/pseuds/heilan_coos
Summary: Andrew turned up to his new workplace Monday morning, and it turned out that wasn't even near the most terrifying part of his day.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Insect Character
Series: The World of Humans [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785028
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Asymmetric

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneEntireBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneEntireBee/gifts).



**A** ndrew was looking forward to his new workplace in his old town, or at least if he told himself that enough times it might become true. Things had certainly changed around town between him charging out to university and coming skulking back: there were humanoid insects integrating themselves into the general culture for one; they'd declared the whole town a quarantine area to test out interspecies working; and they'd bulldozed his favorite childhood strip mall to build a new cinema. That last one was particularly aggravating since they'd bulldozed his childhood cinema to build a bar the year before he left.

If nothing else, having some sense of familiarity would be solid footing, which gave him slightly better chances of not making a complete ass of himself in public. 

It wasn't that he was xenophobic. Probably? At least he hadn't been before there were people who looked like insects. Bugs were his weakness, and had been since he was a small child and his big brother began their prank war in earnest. Now, just about every aspect of them turned his stomach, and that had been fine when they were small and in bushes and not part of his daily life, but from what he'd heard from friends and family as well as the elaborate news coverage was that they would be the size of any other person, which meant all of those insecty bits would be blown up to be huge and in his face, and he would have to be polite in their presence, and he simply wasn't sure if he could do it.

The first couple of days after he moved back were fine; he barely left his new apartment as he unpacked and filtered through the endless orientation emails his work had sent him, getting essentials and takeout delivered and watching the occasional insectoid passersby from his window, trying to accustom himself and rationalize it all before he had to go down and interact with the world close. There were a lot of new things to learn about cultural norms and the names of the insect leaders and the conversation topics to avoid, but at least this T. Mantod that they'd assigned him seemed willing to break it down as if addressing a complete naif, which they were.

His first day finally arrived, despite how little he wanted it to. He turned up at reception with nervous sweat already prickling the skin under his collar, and almost sagged in relief when a very shapely and incredibly human receptionist herded him to the right place.

So far, so good.

He was greeted by his human boss, who walked him around the mostly empty common areas and threaded him through the closed off offices and cubicles that he thankfully couldn't see into, and any bugs in sight were far enough away that he got through it all with only a clenched ass and dry throat. Not ideal but better than it could have been.

Then they got to his tiny little office and he came into very sudden and close contact with the reason it was stupid to ever think this would work.

The assistant they'd given him was a praying mantis. It had a few inches on him, that weed thin body wobbling over him as it bobbed a bow and reached out a hand to him and nope...

He excused himself to the bathroom with an apology that even to himself sounded more like a whimper, and barely made it to the stall before he was vomiting through his fingers. It had been too sudden, the little door opening to be face to face with its shiny shell, just transparent enough to not look real, the hundreds and hundreds of eyes looking directly at him as all those little mouth parts moved and made _a human voice_. His heart was still hammering in his chest as he dragged himself to the sink to wash, splashing water over his face and neck to try and snap himself back. This was no way to behave at work, and if his very professional assistant who'd walked him through this transfer was made of his own concentrated nightmares then that was a problem with him, and he'd have to buckle up if he wanted to keep the job.

When he opened the door again, his boss talking animatedly with his... new office-mate.

"Well then, Andrew, I hope this place suits you, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask myself or Tithrone. I'll leave you in his capable tarsi for now, but we'll catch up at lunch."

The door clicked home behind his boss's fleeing back and Andrew was left alone with his colleague and every phobia he'd ever had. 

"My name is Tithrone Mantod," came a low buzz from beside him, and he forced himself to turn and scan over the surface of the thing's eyes to try and figure out where to look. How do you look something in the thousands of eyes? "I understand that you are new to this environment, and while I understand my kind can be upsetting to humans, I do hope that we will be able to foster a productive working relationship."

Ah, shit. He was really hoping that the thing would be completely alien and he could justify keeping himself in a little bubble, but instead here it was, being considerate with its concern and he was definitely going to be the asshole if he couldn't get his jaw to unlock and give him at least a basic greeting in return.

"I... I look forward to working with you," he ground out, and with a mind as blank as only true fear can generate he held out his hand for a shake. 

The enormous praying mantis wriggled its mouth bits and reached to take his hand, and Andrew's body struggled to choose between locking up and fainting dead away, ending up in a third option where all his joints unlocked and went limp at once at the same time as his skin felt it was crawling off him. He could feel how wobbly the smile on his face felt, but he couldn't really figure out how to make it more solid, even as the handshake stretched on and he became vaguely aware that it wasn't all that bad, and there were none of the tearing claws that he'd feared - his fingers were on a smooth and dry shell at the back of its... hand? and his palm felt like it was against a rough velvet or smoother coconut matting. 

The mantis, or more, Tithrone let go first, and when it turned to return to its standing desk Andrew had a moment to take in the absurdity of the insect people wearing human clothes, the little suit jacket incredibly thin to match its frame before giving up at the enormous abdomen which swung behind him, green wings held close. How did a mantis put on a jacket anyway? Special tailoring? 

"If you could log in with the credentials I sent you, there are a couple of emails already in your inbox with the rest of the IT setup rigmarole," Tithrone hummed from the other side of the little room. "And I hope you do not take this the wrong way, but it is normally easiest for humans to focus on my ocelli when talking to me." He gestured a clawed arm between his antennae. "What you see as pupils are pseudopupils, an artifact of how I process light, so please do not assume I am looking at you unless I am facing you."

There was a beat where Andrew was sure that he'd already fucked it and this was about to be the most awkward workplace of his life, but then Tithrone erupted in movement, arms unhooking and extending as he flailed about, wobbling from the waist.

"That was not an insinuation! I apologize if I presumed ignorance on your part, it is simply a common misconception that I wished to combat before you were inconvenienced. But please ask me if you have any questions!"

Andrew chuckled and waved away the concern.

"I was ignorant of it, so thanks."

The arms retracted and Tithrone settled back into complete stillness.

"I see, thank you."

Another beat, and then the typing storm began - only one key at a time with one tarsus per arm, but obviously quick reaction times and good dexterity made up for a lot of things. He tried to keep his eyes on his own work, but a combination of the morbid curiosity over his own fear, the endless clacking and the uncanny illusion that he was being stared at meant that he did far less work than he should have over the course of the day.

The more time he spent in that little room, the more he stared. There was so much that unsettled him beyond the pseudostaring and the claws that didn't feel like claws and the strange mechanical grammar and buzzing lilt that was every time Tithrone addressed him. It was those little segments of antennae, and how they twitched and flailed erratically, and even though they had metres between them he imagined their ghostly touch on his skin. It was the four thin ankles splayed wide across the floor and the abdomen that looked preternaturally heavy swaying between them. It was his mouth, everything about it, and the morbid knowledge that it could form human syllables, as though there were lips or a tongue involved. Was there a tongue involved? He shuddered. And the buzzing underneath the words seemed to go through him and vibrate at the back of his eyes; a feeling that stuck with him all along the commute home. 

He wasted no time calling his brother, but to his surprise he was treated as though he were the strange one for not being completely, totally on board with the idea of enormous predatory bugs sharing the office kitchen. 

"I don't see how you can get freaked out by the bug guy having six legs and not be weirded out by, like, centaurs. I mean, we were all a bit weirded out for a while, but you'll get used to it in the end."

"I'm trying, but how do you ignore it long enough to get used to it?" he asked, not caring if his tone was a little desperate.

"Get drunk?"

He ended up getting pretty far down a bottle of rum before turning to the internet in a last-ditch effort to at least understand all that endless weirdness, even if he couldn't get over it. He fell asleep with his laptop on his chest, and was greeted by deliriously realistic nightmares of being eaten alive by fruit flies, sponged up one suck at a time.

The next day he went into work prepared, and was able to return Tithrone's greeting with a more fluid smile and a nod of his head. By the time they'd made small talk about the weather and traffic he was positively giddy, and was careful to keep his eyes glued to his screen the whole morning. In the afternoon came the next hump, a scheduled talk about the introductions to be made and project timeline. It was impossible for him to stare woodenly at his screen for the whole duration, which meant that he had to look up. 

Which meant his eyes were drawn straight to those mandibles working away, and it was only a little better knowing what everything was doing there. Focusing on the mouth also meant that he became hyper-aware of the buzzing as it bored through his head. 

"Are you alright?" Tithrone asked mildly, the third time that he'd trailed off to nothing, and he forced himself to look up to those few pitch-black ocelli. "You seem distracted."

"S'fine," Andrew mumbled. "Just... sorry. It's taking a while to get used to. I have..."

"Do not worry," Tithrone interrupted, the buzz low in what was probably a whisper. "There have been others who have been unable to become accustomed to us. If it becomes an issue I will ask to transfer."

He broke his stare from the little void-eyes to the paperwork and scowled. That isn't what he wanted. How was the bug a better person that he was? 

"I'll get better. I mean, I've been scared of... of... insects my whole life, but they've never had a face before, y'know?"

He waited, unsure if insect was even still the right word, or was it bug or entoform or any of the others now? Instead there was a small, high-pitched wheezing sound, and he looked up to see Tithrone was vibrating. 

"I am not sure I do understand." The buzz was higher as well; it was laughing through its spiracles! "We do not have faces any more than your common beetles do, and it is something that many of my people say about your kind as well. But I appreciate your effort."

Andrew smiled, and there was a twitching of Tithrone's mandibles that he could almost believe were its mirror. 

They got on with the rest of the meeting in slightly more amiable company, and he was proud of himself that he was only slightly terrified for the entire time, and his muscles were far more responsive. In fact, by the time he got back to working on his own the only slight spikes of paranoia were when he forgot he was in the room with an enormous insect, would look up and then nearly piss himself before remembering his place.

The first time they ate lunch together was revealing in itself. Tithrone had a lunch box with him, and pulled out of it a series of what looked like fruit rolls. When asked he only said 'protein', before one of the old hands had called over to Tithrone not to ask if Andrew's dessert had cochineal in it. 

Now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen the usual fly traps around, and there hadn't been a single spiderweb in his apartment's bike sheds. Did this city have normal bugs? Was this a dominance thing? If he'd been a one inch spider he sure as shit wasn't going to spar with a six-footer.

He was interrupted in his thoughts when one of the temps, whose name escaped him, came over to their little table with a cup. It sensed her coming from a long ways off, big head snapping round on that little neck to fixate on her, antennae going wild.

"Is that sugar water?" Tithrone asked in that same high pitch, and she plonked the cup down on their table with a smile.

"Sprite, which is hopefully close enough. They've not wrangled the new soda contracts yet. Thanks for getting that contract to me early, saved me a whole load of earache from upstairs."

Tithrone didn't seem to hear her, all his attention intently focused on threading the sponge straw into his mandibles.

Cute, Andrew thought, before he could really investigate the opinion. 

It became normal slowly; the buzz of his voice stopped making his skin crawl, then became background noise. After weeks of talking it became hypnotic, and a welcome lull of his senses. He started to read the little twitches of antennae and clicks of mandibles like eyebrows and lips, until he was as expressive as any other worker in the office.

One day there was an email from 'Tithrone Mantod 1432', and a different email address. Huh.

When he asked him about it, one of his daily inquiries into insect life, he was greeted with confusion.

"That is from 1432, I am 4826. I do not see how there could be any confusion."

Andrew was very confused.

"There are thousands of you with the same name? How do you tell each other apart?"

"Number. As insects we didn't have verbal names, so this was the fastest way to adapt to your culture. All of my species are labelled like this."

Andrew sat. It didn't seem right, to be only a number. Impersonal.

"Right! From now on, you're Hurley."

"What is Hurley?" Tithrone asked, head tilting.

"I'll show you sometime. Suits you though."

"If you insist," he replied, with that same mosaic smile.

He was almost surprised when the wings didn't terrify him. Hurley was always on time to leave, exactly on the button at 17:30, while he worked late trying to get up to speed with company policy. It was paying off, and he was getting out earlier and earlier until, at last, they walked out at the same time. It made sense that Hurley would fly home, even if he'd never really considered it before. 

When he first saw the sunlight streaming through the thin membrane he was impressed, more than anything. They were as beautiful as they were delicate, three pink and one green, all with a fine network of veins throughout, but he can't say anything in appreciation before they're beating, so, so fast, and then he's off and flying straight and true, silhouetted against the sky; nothing like some of the lumbering beetles or doddering crane flies he'd seen around time. 

He was gorgeous.

It's only a few days after that at the reception for some incredibly boring industry symposium that he finds himself across from Hurley, two beers down and the third cooling his palm.

"But... how do you fit everything in that little waist of yours? I could get all of you in both these hands." 

He made a feint, grabbing at the air with the smile hurting his face. Hurley dodged anyway, swiveling around on his four wide legs.

"I compensate," he buzzed, his long, wide abdomen swishing through the air. Andrew looked on appreciatively, wondering if it would be as soft and pliable as it looked. "I could ask you the same question; it makes no sense to me that humans fit everything in that tiny thorax of yours without a proper abdomen, except the little dangly bit at the front."

"It's not so small for everyone," he said, the beer dragging the smirk to his lips even as his heart hammered in his chest.

Hurley cocked his head again, a move that he now knew meant intense focus rather than curiosity. 

He swallowed hard.

"Say, it isn't true what they say about mantids, right? About you guys killing the people you sleep with?"

Hurley laughed his high hum, head still angled.

"Just the women."

"Yeah?"

Hurley reached a tarsus and dragged it along Andrew's arms, the transferred cool of his cooler raising all the hairs up to his neck.

"If you don't believe me I can show you."

Andrew let out a long sigh, excitement thrumming through his veins.

"Let me buy you a sprite first."

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jtn3Apxwj4
> 
> From the album 'Hurley'


End file.
